Its been exactly one week. One week ago today we arrived in Kolkata and went through probably the most epic culture shock I have yet to experience in my young life. The sight of young kids begging as their profession, dogs that look like their rotting away eaten by disease, dilapidated buildings, and the slum like housing structure you see all too often on the streets every single day begins to take a toll on our fragile and naive American perspectives and emotional states. With the constant honking, shouting and all other strange noises that echo throughout Kolkata we have yet to have a moment of silence. Even in our rooms, there is shouting throughout the night and fires burning that keep you awake – making our incident with the fire seem fairly normal.
Work provides no sanctuary from the chaos that ensues outside and that shakes us up on the inside. The Indian work life moves at a much slower pace than what we are used to in the states. Employees trickle in between 10:30am and 11:30am, lunch begins around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, and we don’t leave until around 8pm at night. Our office has no windows to the outside and being stuck in a small space for so long can get nauseating. To make the situation a little bit unfamiliar, no one has the same work ethic that we are so used to seeing which makes us feel abnormal and confused. There is another group of Americans here from the U.S. working another app which baffled us a bit. Why are we working harder than most to fix problems that aren’t ours – a question I seek to answer in my time here. Leaving work almost involves going through the same culture shock as when we stepped off the plane here in Kolkata. This repeated culture shock happens a lot to us. We are often directed by locals to some of the swankiest restaurants and coffee shops around. Stepping into them almost feels like stepping back into American boundaries. But when you leave the place and open the door you wake up to reality and realize there are still people sleeping outside, still children begging, and still the dirty and broken infrastructure surrounding you. Its powerful being here, it takes everything you know and every routine your used to and flips it upside down and forces you to cope with it. There is a reason I wanted to do this and iKure was not that reason. I wanted to come back to India and I wanted to help. But when I got here I found myself asking the question why. Whats the purpose of an American coming to a foreign country to fix what seems unfixable. What we see here is what American’s would call lazy but I think its complacency. I think many Indians accept what the situation is and lack the motivation to change the status quo and this is not unfamiliar, this we see all too often in the States and around the world. Why fix problems that aren’t your own. After all it is survival of the fittest.
Perhaps then it isn’t about coming in as outsiders and fixing what needs to be fixed. It is clear that handing individuals money and technology won’t change their attitudes. And maybe helping them do their jobs also won’t change anything. I think we need to look further, try and change and educate the next generation of minds growing up in the developing world to aspire to fix their country’s problems – help them understand how they can make the world a better place for themselves, their families, and their children to come. This challenge is a daunting one but not an impossible one.
Right now I sit in a coffee shop attempting to work but can’t stop from reflecting. The windows are big here so it doesn’t feel like you’re in an artificial reality – you can see what goes on outside. We are on Park Street, Kolkata’s place to be essentially with restaurants, swanky hotels, and lined with vendors selling everything from newspapers to Bengali sweets. But out my window there is a child, maybe 4 years old sitting on the ground playing in the monsoon rains entirely naked. Every person walks by not even bothering to look and no one stops to help. Police are on every corner and do not do a thing. Somehow I don’t necessarily blame them, again its all about becoming complacent, and yet something is slowly ripping my heart apart. Reasonable given I was raised in a family where every stray dog we came across was taken into our home. So what can we do when we don’t speak Bengali and are living in a hotel? For a second I did consider adopting a homeless Bengali child – but chose an alternative. I run out looking for clothes in the nearby radius to give the child but am not able to find anything but sari shops. After the frustration has proved to be too much, I call a few orphanages in hopes that one will speak english and help me do something. Finally got a hold of one and they tell me to call the child helpline – 1098. I call the helpline and how long the process takes to give them information is a struggle. Trying to explain to them where the child is when addresses in India are hard to find is invigorating. Eventually they tell us they will be coming soon to rescue the child but in India time who knows how long that takes.